She Told Cops About Christian Gulzow's Death Threat, but It Didn't Prevent Murder

Christian Gulzow, the Denver-area death-metal scenester accused of murdering Brian Lucero in the parking lot of Torchy's Tacos on May 23 while wearing white facial makeup and gloves with blades protruding from the fingers, was reported to police last year for threatening to kill another local musician, Akira Jadexx. However, no action appears to have been taken against Gulzow as a result of this contact, and he continued to harass Jadexx intermittently until mere months before his arrest for Lucero's slaying.

"I'm really shocked by this," Jadexx says. "When you know a person face-to-face, and at one point you were friends, you don't even know what to think after a tragedy like this happens."

According to a probable-cause statement in the case that we detailed in our previous coverage, Denver police officers were called about a disturbance at 12:49 a.m. on the 23rd. They arrived at the crime scene, located near the intersection of 11th and Broadway, to find Lucero, 29, with a visible stab wound to the throat. He was transported to Denver Health Medical Center but failed to respond to treatment. Time of death was 1:11 a.m.

The two men reportedly got into a spat outside the Corner Store, at 1001 Broadway, after Gulzow allegedly threatened Lucero. Attempted punches were exchanged before Lucero headed north up the alley behind the convenience store. Gulzow is said to have followed him to the Torchy's parking lot, where other witnesses saw Lucero collapse.

Gulzow's clothing was bloody when he was taken into custody that same morning. During a subsequent interrogation, he's quoted as saying that Lucero had tried to steal his scooter, leading to a physical altercation and a hard fall. He speculated that Lucero had been hurt when he'd jabbed a glove in his direction — or perhaps he landed on a spike from Gulzow's wrist bracelet. But this explanation didn't convince the Denver District Attorney's Office, which has formally charged Gulzow with one count of first-degree murder.

Christian Gulzow as seen on a YouNow video.

YouNow.com file photo

Jadexx met Gulzow at a show by a local band with which he was associated. "I believe it was February 2016," Jadexx recalls. "At first I thought he was a decent person. He was a musician; he was musically involved around the music scene and seemed pretty cool. I thought it would be nice to be friends with someone who had his musical taste."

Shortly thereafter, Jadexx and Gulzow began getting together both virtually and literally. "We would live-stream on YouNow," a video chat service, she points out. "When we were broadcasting, I'd show him the music I was doing, and he would show me the stuff he was doing. And we'd also hang out in person. We went out to drink before, and he spent nights at my house. My mom even met him."

Nevertheless, Jadexx was only interested in friendship, and she says he wanted more. "He would message me on Facebook and tell me, 'Hey, I want to date you' and stuff — and on YouNow, he would blow kisses at me and that kind of thing. But I brushed it off, just thinking he was someone who admired me for no reason, since he hadn't gotten a chance to know me as a person, and I hadn't gotten a chance to know him like that, either."

But the next month, after Jadexx firmly declined to take their relationship to the next level, Gulzow "didn't like that at all," she recalls. "He texted me through Facebook Messenger and told me he was going to kill me," as seen in the screen capture at the top of this post.

"I'm taking this to the police," Jadexx wrote in response, and she followed through. "I didn't feel safe," she acknowledges. "So they took a statement from me, and they said they would have a talk with Christian about what was going on."

Hopes that Gulzow would back off after the cops got involved proved short-lived. "I announced on Facebook what was going on, and my fans started messaging him to leave me alone. But then he sent another threat — this weird picture of a demon. It creeped me out."

Here's the screen cap from that episode.

Facebook

Other threats followed, with Gulzow using a variety of new accounts after Jadexx blocked him on her social-media pages. Yet she didn't call the police again — because, she says, mutual friends assured her that he was "all talk."

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Nonetheless, Gulzow continued to harass Jadexx until as recently as three months ago. "He was one of my followers on YouNow," she notes, "and he would call me names, some vulgar stuff, even in front of my fans." She also saw him in the flesh at a Psyclon Nine concert at 3 Kings Tavern on March 23 — but, she says, "I was with my boyfriend, and he didn't say anything to me."

The next time she encountered Gulzow was in news coverage of the Lucero slaying.

At first, Jadexx was in disbelief: "I knew he had some violent characteristics, but I never would have thought he'd take it that far." But then she thought about some of the videos Gulzow shared on YouNow, "which were really, really disturbing. I honestly think he needs professional help."

Jadexx doesn't explicitly say she regrets not phoning the police again after her first complaint failed to end his harassment. But she does stress that "it's a good idea not to take threats like that lightly — especially if it's a threat stating that you're going to be killed."

Michael Roberts has written for Westword since October 1990, serving stints as music editor and media columnist. He currently covers everything from breaking news and politics to sports and stories that defy categorization.